Whether it’s the Keeper speaking to solicitors or our customer relationship managers and customer service experts handling specific enquiries, effective collaboration with stakeholders is a cornerstone of our work at RoS.
One such channel that’s particularly important is our regular interaction with the Professional Support Lawyers (PSL) group. They represent a valuable way for RoS to gain an understanding of the issues that matter to this significant stakeholder group.
We’ve only just had a fresh example of why this connection is so important relating to our advance notices and application form. On the agenda of a recent PSL/RoS meeting was a particular query regarding advance notices and our application form for a variation of lease, which was causing confusion among some users.
As seen in the screenshot below, the existing form featured three options, with some overlap in the different choices.
We investigated this internally, and saw how we could update the form to provide a better user journey for our customers. The relating work is complete, and we’re pleased to say that a new, streamlined format will go live on 23 October.
What you need to know about these changes
As part of the update, we’ll be removing the ‘Minute of Extension of a Lease’ option. Additionally, the first option of ‘Variation of Lease’ (for extension of subjects only) will now read ‘Variation of Lease (which includes extension of subjects)’.
The third option highlighted in the screenshot above (‘Variation of Lease (other than to extend the subjects))” will remain unchanged, with the exception of removing the “the” before subjects, for conciseness and consistency.
We expect this change to cause a minimal amount of disruption to our customers. We’ll continue to accept forms for Minute of Extension of Lease in the post; only draft eForms for a Minute of Extension of Lease that remain incomplete on 23 October will need to be redone.
Draft Advance Notices will not need to be redone, and if before the change you’ve created a draft Advance Notice with deed type Minute of Extension of Lease, then the deed type will be automatically changed to “Variation of Lease (which includes extension of subjects)”.
Continuous improvement to our land registration application form
In addition to the above, we’ve also been working with customers to understand how they’ve been using our recently upgraded land registration application form, and where there might be room for further improvement.
Based on these discussions, also on 23 October we’re delivering a few minor tweaks to the form layout. These don’t affect the functionality of the form, but streamline the final product. For instance, in the current form the agent telephone number is mandatory; in the updated version it’s optional, as user feedback has shown that agents often prefer email correspondence.
The other two enhancements relate to the printed PDF. When printing the new version, you’ll notice that we’ll omit the ‘Supplementary Information section’ if it’s empty, as well as the subsequent ROI questions if the first is answered ‘No’. There’s no change to the final information submitted to RoS; we’re simply streamlining the form and removing unnecessary areas from the printed form.
Find out more
Updates like these may seem minor or simple fixes, but for us they’re a powerful reminder of how important collaboration is both RoS and our customers to work effectively.
If you have any questions on the changes discussed above, please contact your RoS customer relationship manager
Follow the team via @RegistersOfScot on Twitter and on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube for more updates. If you liked this article or have more questions, make sure to comment below!